Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts
Antonin Scalia, Bryan A. Garner
Language: English
Pages: 608
ISBN: 031427555X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In this groundbreaking book by best-selling authors Justice Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner, all the most important principles of constitutional, statutory, and contractual interpretation are systematically explained in an engaging and informative style-including several hundred illustrations from actual cases. Never before has legal interpretation been so fascinatingly explained. Both authors are individually renowned for their scintillating prose styles, and together they make even the seemingly dry subject of legal interpretation riveting. Though intended primarily for judges and the lawyers who appear before them to argue the meaning of texts, Reading Law is sound educational reading for anyone who seeks to understand how judges decide cases-or should decide cases. The book is a superb introduction to modern judicial decision-making. Justice Scalia, with 25 years of experience on the Supreme Court, is the foremost expositor of textualism in the world today. Bryan A. Garner, as editor in chief of Black's Law Dictionary and author of Garner's Dictionary of Legal Usage, is the most renowned expert on the language of the law. Reading Law is an essential guide to anyone who wishes to prevail in a legal argument-based on a constitution, a statute, or a contract. The book is calculated to promote valid interpretations: if you have lame arguments, you'll deplore the book; if you have strong arguments, you'll exalt it. But whatever your position, you'll think about law more clearly than ever before.
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there been open, notorious, and pervasive violations of the statute for a long period? (3) Has there been a “conspicuous policy of nonenforcement”?11 Apart from the serious indeterminateness of this test, the incompatibility of the entire enterprise with democratic government is demonstrated by the statement with which the court concludes that portion of its opinion: “[T]he Legislature may revitalize any statute simply by repassing it.”12 The rationale for this supposed doctrine of
Rev. 26 (1994). Eskridge, William N., Jr.; and Philip P. Frickey. Legislation Scholarship and Pedagogy in the Post-Legal Process Era. 48 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 691 (1987). Eskridge, William N., Jr.; and Philip P. Frickey. The Making of the Legal Process. 107 Harv. L. Rev. 2031 (1994). Eskridge, William N., Jr.; and Philip P. Frickey. Quasi-Constitutional Law: Clear Statement Rules as Constitutional Lawmaking. 45 Vand. L. Rev. 593 (1992). Eskridge, William N., Jr.; and Philip P. Frickey. Statutory
1898) (“We don’t care a damn for the meaning of the writer and . . . the only question is the meaning of the words . . .”); Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Common Law 309 (1881) (“The law has nothing to do with the actual state of the parties’ minds. In contract, as elsewhere, it must go by externals, and judge parties by their conduct.”); Rickman v. Carstairs, [1833] 5 B. & Ad. 651, 663, 110 E.R. 931, 936 (per Lord Denman) (“The question in this and other cases of construction of written instruments
valid unless they bear no rational relationship to the State’s objectives.”). Prefatory Remarks 1 See Otto A. Bird, The Idea of Justice 43–78 (1967). 2 See id. at 79–117. 3 See id. at 118–60. 4 See, e.g., Ohio Rev. Code § 1.49. 5 See Jonathan R. Siegel, The Use of Legislative History in a System of Separated Powers, 53 Vand. L. Rev. 1457, 1458 (2000); John F. Manning, Putting Legislative History to a Vote: A Response to Professor Siegel, 53 Vand. L. Rev. 1529, 1533–34 (2000). 6 See, e.g.,
analysis is laudable. 32. Ejusdem Generis Canon Where general words follow an enumeration of two or more things, they apply only to persons or things of the same general kind or class specifically mentioned (ejusdem generis). The ejusdem generis canon applies when a drafter has tacked on a catchall phrase at the end of an enumeration of specifics, as in dogs, cats, horses, cattle, and other animals. Does the phrase and other animals refer to wild animals as well as domesticated ones? What
